Who needs an external on/off Wi-Fi button?
It puzzles me that there are Laptops which are shipped with external physical Wi-Fi buttons. I see no real use of it, but it might have a historical explanation?! The only time one notice the external button is when one accidentally pushes the switch off, resulting in no data connection and “the internet is lost”. So my question is simply “Who needs an external on/off Wi-Fi button?”
How many characters should typical address fields allow on an international website?
On an HTML form, What is the maximum amount of characters that should be allowed for:
Street Address 1
Street Address 2
Town/Suburb
State/Province (I would have drop downs for main countries, but I can’t list every one in t…
Why is it that all caps text looks like SHOUTING, but all caps handwriting is easier to read?
Specifically for UI — handwritten mockups, comics, etc are always better all-caps, but the same is never true for printed text. Why is that?
Visual Studio 2012’s all-caps menus are generally despised.
http://blogs.msdn.com…
Why is it that all caps text looks like SHOUTING, but all caps handwriting is easier to read?
Specifically for UI — handwritten mockups, comics, etc are always better all-caps, but the same is never true for printed text. Why is that?
Visual Studio 2012’s all-caps menus are generally despised.
http://blogs.msdn.com…
How Many Screenshots Are Too Many
At what point am I offering too many screenshots? I am working a redesign of my company’s help guides – these guides are mostly centered around our hosted mail services. How to set up Outlook, set up a smartphone, things of t…
How Many Screenshots Are Too Many
At what point am I offering too many screenshots? I am working a redesign of my company’s help guides – these guides are mostly centered around our hosted mail services. How to set up Outlook, set up a smartphone, things of t…
Is right-click still an important gesture to hold on to?
With more and more people using mobile devices (or devices which doesn’t have right click gesture), its getting tough to indicate that there is an activity that involves right click on desktop devices, especially for those ap…
What should be my first steps as Director of User Experience?
I’d be thinking about doing all of these things.
- Meet everybody – not just the designers. Pay especial attention to any person or group who touches customers – sales, customer support, technical authors, etc. – or who drives product direction – CEO, product managers, etc.
- Get everybody to tell you stories. About how the company started and how the product got to its current state. Almost nothing about the company culture gets written down – especially in early stage startups. The quickest way to get a handle on the company and its politics are to listen to peoples stories about how the company got to where it is now. They may not be true – but they will be useful.
- Who are you replacing and why? You might not be replacing somebody with your job title – but people will have been trying to do the work. Find out who those people are. Listen to the stories they have to tell. The company didn’t promote from the inside. Figure out why.
- More leading. Less doing. Remember as a director your job is not to do all of the UX work – it’s to lead all of the UX work. Designers seem more susceptible than most to the sin of micro-management.
- Figure out what the company believes their product vision(s) are. What do people think they are building? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of what this is.
- Figure out what the company believes their customer(s) are. Who do people think they are building for? Do not be surprised if different parts of the company have different ideas of who these are.
- Figure out who the company’s customers really are, and what they think the product vision is. Do not be surprised if these differ from (5) and (6).
- Look before you leap. The temptation to immediately jump in and start fixing things is worth resisting. Watch how things normally run for a week or two first. Figure out what the biggest problems are – not the most obvious ones.
- Get alignment as a first step. Get everybody on the same page on the direction of the product and the customers it serves. This doesn’t have to be final. It doesn’t even have to be vaguely correct. But it’s much easier to move everybody once they’re in a group heading in the same direction.
Contact form on mobile vs. mailto: link?
I have decided to put a contact form in the footer for my portfolio site and opening the question up to include any site where the decision was to add a contact form on the desktop version…
Would it be more accessible to …
What should be my first steps as Director of User Experience?
If there are other designers who report to you, set up regular 1-on-1 meetings. They’ll tell you where the problem spots are.
Arrange interviews with users. They too will tell you what the problems are.
Meet with the executives. What’s their vision for the product?
Armed with this knowledge, map out where the product needs improvement and then pick something small to get an easy win right off the bat. if there’s been no one in your position, it’ll be good to demonstrate value quickly.